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Photography Surrogate with Midjourney AI

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Michael Erlewine:
Photography Surrogate with Midjourney AI

https://www.midjourney.com/showcase/

The iPhone and mobile phones have been eating professional photographer’s lunch for a long time. Then, when you least suspect it here comes what I consider an even a larger threat, in the form the Midjourney AI graphic engine and its marvelous power in create all kinds of images just as we like them… or close.

This Midjourney AI graphic tool is not just a window into the future, IMO, but rather a portal into the future through which we image-lovers will be travelling no matter how we feel now. What it does, aside from make interesting graphics, is loosen the bonds that bind us to this physical body and much as the confusion caused by politically ‘Fake News’ differs from actual news, Midjourney muddies the water between reality and our impressions of it, marking our drift toward the holographic and the ‘empty but real’ world as an active illusion.

I have sampled it enough to know what Midjourney is, how it may affect us, and possibly where it could take us. And Midjourney will plunge us toward this great ‘illusion’ we suffer from, the one where we cling to the idea that the phenomenal universe is somehow also real. It’s not, but we don’t believe that and never have.

And so, I see Midjourney AI as a steppingstone in a path to discovering that this world that we know is not real like we assume, but rather an elaborate illusion that at this point, like a straight-jacket, entertains and encapsulates us completely.

The function of portals like Midjourney, aside from their visual treats, is to loosen our mental moorings and make it easier for us to cast off from the dock of what we call reality (as we have known it) and learn to surf the sea of this illusion we call life as a new kind of reality.

If you notice, Midjourney does not reproduce purely realistic images, but images that ‘sound like’ or seem like the real thing. They have the feeling that we put into them. The comfort of familiarity is there and that, to me, tells me what Midjourney actually is, a blurring of the hard boundaries of reality in favor of feeling familiar, growing gossamer wings.

This seems to be the early Multiverse encapsulating us before we even know it.

No, this is not a replacement for photography, yet it is a giant step in terms of satisfying what many folks use photography for. Any of you trying Midjourney?

Fons Baerken:
Havenot tried or even heard of this program reminds me of that meta thing.
Of course this may be used creatively or as tool to fool peoples' perceptions and yet another
set of incarnations to live through.
Thanks for pointing out.

Akira:
Michael, as you would have already noticed, I feel that what had happened to the recording industry has truly arrived to the photography.

Nevertheless, I like the images posted here.  They should work nicely for some album covers.

Michael Erlewine:

--- Quote from: Akira on August 17, 2022, 11:08:56 ---Michael, as you would have already noticed, I feel that what had happened to the recording industry has truly arrived to the photography.

Nevertheless, I like the images posted here.  They should work nicely for some album covers.

--- End quote ---

Indeed it has. Having been involved in the music world for many decades that is so true. I believe the Midjourney AI is just getting started. They say that video is next and pretty soon. I feel I can get the feeling I am trying for in close-up or landscape photography more easily than I can find a spot to photograph. Now, if they just up the technique a nit. LOL. This is just a Beta now.

David H. Hartman:
I guess I'm simple and stupid. I'm sitting and watching my friend's pet cockatoo play. The sun is coming up and soon it will be too hot for the bird here on the edge of the desert in inland Southern California.

Birds pant like dogs, they don't sweat. I have to keep an eye out for the signs the bird might be over-heating. A bird in a large cage thousands of miles from cooler Northern Australian forests could die from heat stroke. This bird frequently calls me by name and points to her head and says, "Scratch; scratch, scratch."

I'm here sitting in a chair. The bird is ten feet away enjoying herself preening and tearing up paper as cockatoos do. I can feel the infrared heat of the sun coming through improvised shade material covering a large out door cage "aviary" that's about (9.5 x 16 feet) 2.9 x 4.8 meters.

This is reality. The chair I'm sitting in is solid no matter that physicists say it isn't.

I, myself have no interest in creating AI Images.

Dave

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